Toothbrushes are well known and commonly employed to maintain dental hygiene. Toothbrushes are routinely used daily or more often to brush teeth to remove food particles, plaque, and other debris from around the teeth and gums. Most dental hygiene professionals recommend brushing the teeth by moving the toothbrush in a reciprocal lateral direction with the toothbrush held in a general horizontal position during brushing to facilitate safe and efficient cleaning of the teeth and gums.
A standard toothbrush includes bristles mounted in a head. The head provides support for the bristles. The bristles are mounted on the toothbrush in an upright orientation to enable the brushing ends of the bristles to engage the teeth when the toothbrush is used to brush teeth. During the use of a toothbrush, the bristles inherently bend repeatedly. Following prolonged use, the repeated bending of the bristles causes the bristles to splay permanently outwards from the upward orientation and can cause some of the bristles to break where they bend at their attachment point to the head reducing bristle density, whereupon the toothbrush is discarded and replaced.
In the United States alone it is estimated that nearly a billion toothbrushes, representing more than 50 million pounds of waste, are discarded and end up in land fills every year. These toothbrushes are made from a combination of plastic, rubber, nylon, and a combination of plastic and cardboard for the packaging. These materials are largely not biodegradable. Therefore, they remain in landfills indefinitely. Furthermore, discarded toothbrushes often end up in the oceans, washed up on our beaches, or consumed by marine life. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a toothbrush having a bristle-mounting system that retards bristle bending relative to the head for retarding bristle strain and breakage for prolonging bristle competency and bristle life for, in turn, prolonging the useful life of the toothbrush for reducing the adverse environmental impacts that discarded toothbrushes inflict on the environment.